Will the Test Leaders Stand Up? A personal Paul Gerrard gerrardconsulting.com

Agenda A Methodological Shift Five Year Predictions Some Doors Close, but Others Open Change Needs Leadership Will the Test Leaders Stand Up?

A Methodological Shift From staged, structured projects to iterative and Agile and now, towards ‘continuous delivery’

Software as a Service dominates the growth of public cloud markets

Massive re-architecting of systems and companies – work in progress Many (most?) public websites will be replaced by mobile apps – depends on who you talk to SaaS will represent 26% of all packaged software (so what?) – To re-architect an installed base of software and create new systems will be a monumental effort – The challenges of integration, security, performance and reliability will be daunting.

Changes ahead System users and service vendors moving to new business models based on new architectures SaaS is an enabler for very rapid deployment of new functionality onto a range of devices SaaS and maturing Agile approaches mean the promise of Continuous Delivery can be achieved.

And Continuous Delivery is... From requirement to deployment in 24 hours… every 24 hours?

From traditional delivery… … to Continuous Delivery

The Deployment Pipeline Automated Unit tests Automated Acceptance Tests Manual User Tests

Structured … Agile? We are in transition A re-think is in progress Adopting new architectures and a more streamlined approach to development Requirements half-life of weeks or months Agile approaches are homing in on continuous delivery Kanban-Ichiwichi-Hokikoki-Kamikaze-Driven Development – Whatever! A hybrid Agile-Structured process: – Structured Analysis, Agile Delivery? – That would be SAAD!

What does this mean for practitioners? Re-distributed functional testing A focus on continuous test and assurance Service integration replaces system integration Non-functional skills, design and test particularly UX, security, privacy, performance are in demand (‘twas always so) The ability to balance competing non- functional requirements in demand too.

TestingBDD/Test-Driven) Trusted Requirements + Stories Redistributed testing Functional Requirements Build (+little testing) but lots of rework Testing (lots of checking + bugs) Trusted Requirements + Stories Testing SAVED TIME BDD/Test-Driven

The real squeeze on testing From the ‘low-value’ unskilled, downstream test role to upstream, business-savvy, workflow-oriented, UX (user experience)- aware testing specialists with new tools – Developers absorb the checking – with tools – Business analysis owns acceptance – New focus on requirements management – Under-skilled testers, relying on clerical skills to get by will be squeezed out.

My Five-Year Predictions From 2011 Are we half way there?

#1 50% of in-house testers will be reassigned or outsourced

#2 Business test planning will become part of up- front analysis and design (where it should be)

#3 Specification by Example will become the new buzzword (includes ATDD, BDD, TDD etc.) I was wrong

#4 Developers will adopt behaviour ‐ driven development and new tools

#5 Some system tests and most acceptance tests will be business model- driven

#6 Business models plus stories will increasingly become ‘contractual’

#7 System Tests will be generated from stories or will be outsourced

#8 Manual system test execution will be outsourced (and in the cloud)

#9 Maybe half of all acceptance tests will be automated in CI… …forever

#10 New tools that manage the full requirements, stories, scenarios, workflows, testing pipeline will emerge

Some Doors Close, but Other Doors are Opening What are the new opportunities for Test Leads and Managers?

#1 Upstream with stakeholders and analysis – providing testing and assurance skills to business

#2 Managing Business Requirements knowledge; analysing business impact of change

#3 Testmaster: Providing an assurance function to teams, projects and business stakeholders

#4 Managing the information flows to/from the Continuous Integration process

#5 Managing/monitoring outsourced/offshore teams who detail and execute tests

Change Needs Leadership Will you lead change or be changed?

“I must follow the people. Am I not their leader?” Benjamin Disraeli Politician’s view

“The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you. In between, the leader is a servant” Max DePree A businessman’s view (Jeeves leadership model?)

“Lead me, follow me, or get out of my way!” General George Patton A soldier’s view

“You don’t lead by pointing and telling people some place to go. You lead by going to that place and making a case” Ken Kesey A radical author’s view

“You don’t need a title to be a leader” anon anyone can be a leader (volunteer)

“A leader does not deserve the name unless he is willing occasionally to stand alone” Henry A. Kissinger slings and arrows

“The one quality that can be developed by studious reflection and practice is the leadership of men” Dwight D Eisenhower Intelligence, imagination and consensus

“I start with the premise that the function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers” Ralph Nader now we’re getting there

“Don’t get so far ahead of people that they cannot follow” Me

Every now and then, stand still for a while and let people catch up Because there’s trouble ahead (if you don’t want to collaborate)

Will Test Leaders Stand Up? Here are the clichés you need to kill and arguments you need to make

Developers write code; testers test because developers can’t No they don’t

End Manual Feature Checking Let the tools do it all and free the testers to do exploration

Testing doesn’t just apply to existing software, at the end We test systems, not software; We test early, we test often but it might not be called testing

Testing is about measuring achievement, not quality Align delivery with project goals and risks and you’ve got a seat on the board

Testers don’t own testing anymore Be a Testmaster

The phase after development is REWORK, not Testing

Test Phase should not exist Testing must align with development, not follow it Manual test phase must be: – Replaced with up-front automated test design – Integrated with code change and software delivery Testers must embrace the change, not resist it Make that leap! Stand up!

Will the Test Leaders Stand Up? A personal Paul Gerrard gerrardconsulting.com

Thank-You Our Thinking: businessstorymethod.com Our Technology: businessstorymanager.com gerrardconsulting.com